I played through the first couple of hours of Batman Arkham City here are my initial impressions.

Overall, I’m having a great time. It doesn’t feel drastically different than Arkham Asylum, but there are improvements. The addition of side quests give the game of an open world feel. Most of Arkham City is open from the very beginning, which gives the game a bigger sense of scope. The buildings of the city are a better venue than the confines of the asylum.

I loved that the game didn’t bombard me with tutorials and cut scenes right away. There is a short cut scene which sets up the story and then more of the story is revealed through the first battle. The game more or less assumes you played Arkham Asylum and quickly reminds you of the buttons, but it doesn’t force you into drawn out tutorials. You are thrown into the actual game right away. I love that.

You start with all the weapons from the last game. You don’t to wait until you get the batarang, claw, etc. The first weapon you acquire is a completely new gun. It’s great how the game builds on the previous one and doesn’t pretend like you never played Arkham Asylum.

EVERY TIME you load the game, it tries to sell you (or force you to enter the code) for Catwoman. It would be one thing if the option was just there on the menu, but you are forced to choose to buy/not buy the Catwoman DLC EVERY time you play the game. It’s annoying and tacky.

I like Doctor Strange as the main bad guy and am intrigued to see what happens.

In a podcast a few months ago, Colin Moriarty stated that Revolutionary America would be an interesting setting for a future Assassin’s Creed game. That got me thinking about my own personal selection for an Assassin’s Creed setting…

Paris in 1940

Paris’ is the right size city. It has enough buildings to climb and jump from, but the buildings aren’t too big. The skyscrapers in modern day NY would be too tall. Paris has some great cathedrals… Notre Dame anyone? The catacombs. How awesome would it be to jump from the Eifel tower? How fun would it be to assassinate an enemy leader who occupies Versailles?

I know the Nazi’s have been used far too often in video games, a country under foreign occupation works great. The French underground is an organization who operated in the shadows, which fits Assassin’s Creed perfectly.

The tough part of adapting an Assassin’s Creed game to post-renaissance time periods is that guns are everywhere. If there are too many guns available, then the combat in Assassin’s Creed has to be completely changed.